About 18 months ago, I was in a strategy meeting with my
publisher. There were about 7 people around the table — all
women. (Most of publishing is women.) We were discussing which
markets to promote my book to, and we’d discussed all the obvious
ones: Men 24-35, women, moms, parents, etc.

Then I spoke up. “I want to talk to the pickup artists.”

The room got quiet. “Who?” somebody asked.

“There’s a huge sub-culture of guys who help other guys learn how
to be more confident and get a girlfriend,” I said. “They’re all
interested in self-development and psychology — which is exactly
what my book is about.”

“Ugh,” somebody else said. “Is this like those guys who ‘neg’
women to try to take them home from bars?”

The main idea was to help men learn how to approach and engage
women. It could be used for short-term gain or to help men become
more confident and get into long-term relationships. Personally,
I have many friends who could benefit from some coaching.

Predictably, many people saw only the surface applications and
were angry. Common complaints include “How dare they use tricks
on women,” “Only certain kinds of girls fall for this crap,” and
“This is only for weirdos who have no social life.”

However, I was hearing dozens and dozens of stories from guys
who’d had success from using the principles. Notice I said
principles — not tactics. Principles underlie everything you do
and are critically important to long-term behavioral change.

For example, I can teach you a cool negotiation script — a tactic
— and it will probably work. But once you use it, have you
changed anything long-term? No. That comes with automating the
behavior and changing your overall mindset.

So I got interested. I investigated the field. I examined the
principles and tactics. I made friends with some people in the
field.

And I became simultaneously fascinated and disgusted.

I was fascinated because pickup artists employ extremely
sophisticated applied persuasion techniques, including
inoculation, commitment, and social influence. They rigorously
test their ideas to find out which works. And they are committed
to deeply understanding their approach.

However, PUA quickly became ethically questionable. The first
players in this game kept it to themselves and a small group of
people, who all shared techniques to encourage self-development.
Once The Game launched, the market exploded — and where there are
young guys with money, there is a rich market.

To many, PUA became less about self-development and more about
extremely expensive seminars and bootcamps.

Now, I have nothing against expensive educational material. In
fact, I sell some of the most expensive material you can buy on
earning more money. And it is extremely good.
But I can only sell it for such a high price because my free
material works — and my premium material works even better.
Slowly, steadily, I’ve built up trust with my readers over the
last 6 years.

Some of the PUA guys are very, very good. I’ve seen it with my
own eyes. But many are bad and sleazy, and the field is now
filled with a combination of excellent instructors and
disenchanted customers who were promised a quick fix but failed
to see it — even after spending thousands of dollars.

The importance of being interdisciplinary

It’s controversial to talk about pickup on this site. Women get
angry, men scoff publicly (but secretly go Google “PUA forum”),
and nobody likes thinking that we’re susceptible to scripts and
techniques to get us to go to bed with someone else.

But I’m going to talk about PUA anyway.

Do you know why?

Because you need to be more interdisciplinary.

Enough reading 50 blogs about the same topic.

For example, I’m honestly bored by most personal-finance sites.
With a few excellent exceptions, most of it is trite, conformist,
and reveals very few new insights about money. Instead, I read
books and blogs on psychology, persuasion, deception, biology,
health and fitness, entrepreneurship, and gender relations.

And that is why I like to think this site keeps you engaged.

This is why I bring you exclusive material like my interview with BJ Fogg, a Stanford psychologist
who is one of the foremost experts on persuasion.

We can read book after book about investing…but it means
nothing until we implement

Testing is critical

99% of people will stop at the surface of both topics — PUA
and personal finance — but the very few, the very best, will see
them as deeply connected in the area of self-development. This is
why so many people who succeed in automating their finances go on
to improve themselves in health & fitness, public speaking,
and relationships

Many more

Making connections between fields is so important. For instance,
in undergrad and grad school, I took courses on negotiation,
deception, cults, magic, minority influence, organizational
development, group dynamics, arbitration, personality/social
psychology, persuasive technology, and social systems.

Some were controversial. But every one contributed to my views on
human behavior.

And I hope to bring that to you through this site and my premium
products.

If you’re interested in checking out my interview with Jordan
Harbinger of The
Art of Charm, I’ve put together the full 69-min recording for
you. I’ve included a transcript, too.

This is free to readers of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” — but in
exchange, I ask that you trust me with your name and email
address so I can continue to challenge the way you think.

- A invite to my private webcast with Tim Ferriss - where you'll
learn his top time-management techniques, how to create your
first muse, and how he hustled 2 books onto the NYT #1 seller
list when 26 publishers turned him down. - A full recording of my
private webcast with Tim Ferriss - in case you can't make it... -
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